


Synopsis

by Lilsi



Category: The Bill
Genre: Gen, M/M, Memories, Not Really Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 04:10:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1496134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilsi/pseuds/Lilsi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say smell is the last sense we are aware of before we die.<br/>Craig has flashes of memories after two accidents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Synopsis

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction was once posted at Craiggilmore.co.uk a fan site no longer active, so to preserve this story and others, I am importing them to AO3. I did not want the loss of such a large amount of amazing and wonderful fanfiction, it would be such a waste to fans of Craig Gilmore and Luke Ashton to not have the opportunity to enjoy these stories as i have. Since the site is no longer active i have been unable to contact the creators but if you happen to be them under a new pen name and want the fiction to be removed please send me a note!
> 
> Story Written by - Alex

They say that the whole of your life flashes in front of your eyes just before you die. 

 

It's true.

 

The first time it happened to me I was 16: Surfing out on the bay when a swell caught me unawares: smashed my board against my face and knocked me unconscious.

 

Let's face it there really wasn't that much to see.

 

Craig Gilmore aged 3 held tight in my mother's arms as she twirls us down the garden to Elton John's Crocodile Rock.  She has her head thrown back and she's laughing.  Her fair hair streams around her like a halo, occasionally catching across my cheek.  She smells like green apples.  When we tumble onto the grass the laundry on the line flaps above our heads against

 

The powder blue summer sky, and the hard concrete groyne is rough against the back of my knees as Pete and I sit, baking to brown, waxing down our boards.  My first crush, 3 years older than my 15, has green eyes the like the Irish Sea on a cloudy day and hair the colour of caramel.  He is totally unaware of my affection.  We sit close together - arms occasionally touching as we rub, and love smells like wetsuit, sunshine, salt and

 

Ice cream on my lips when Angie Webb kisses me in the dim closeness of The Rialto.  She pushes her lips open against my 13 year old mouth but doesn't, thankfully, try to put her tongue in.  Awkward enough anyway without that.  The seats are red and dusty but her dark hair smells of

 

Pineapple cubes on cocktail sticks at my 10th birthday party.  The world's largest chocolate cake entirely for my benefit, candles' waxy burning and afterwards when I have blown them all out with one puff the air smells like

 

Matches.  I am 12, sitting behind the scout hut trying to smoke like my father.  It tastes foul.  But the security blanket smell of a freshly lit

 

Cigarette is the wrap of my father's arms around me when I fall off my first two wheeler gashing my knee and splitting my lip so the taste of blood fills my mouth.  Like money held too long in your hand.

 

There had been blood in my mouth that day on the beach.  When I woke that first time, from a black hole of kaleidoscopic vision - with time stretching to infinity and no blinding white light at the end of the tunnel, I was almost disappointed.

 

I had been drowned until Pete had dragged me from the water, pushing air into my lungs, quite literally kissing me back to life.  He'd rolled me on my side and heaped towels over me until the ambulance arrived and I was removed to the Emergency Department where everything smelled of antiseptic.

 

When I came home I had the makings of a scar across my nose and a fresh, blank page before me ready to start the next chapter of my life.

 

...

 

I wasn't expecting a repeat performance 16 years later. 

 

Only this time I begin where it ends.

 

With Luke.

 

His voice is the last thing I hear as I float into blackness.

 

“Craig?”  He is warm and needy beside me in his hotel bed, yet I don't think, even now, he knows what he is asking me for.  His tongue on mine tastes of toothpaste over

 

Booze.  My first real kiss from a bloke on the steps outside the tax office of all places.  One hand, one of my 17 year old hands, inside the front of his trousers - I'm    just drunk enough to dare to cop a feel.  I can't keep away from him in the unlit phone box as he dials for a taxi to take me home.  He laughs and calls me beautiful and dangerous in the same breath, and rubs his face against mine and his skin is smooth and clean.  It's easy to be brave when the only illumination is the

 

Orange light gives way to green as fireworks explode outside the boys' changing room.  18 years old, my jeans pushed to my knees, Jeff's mouth warm around around my shaft the first time he (anyone) blew me.  His tongue on the downstroke striving to touch my balls.  I'm sliding down against the store cupboard unable to grip

 

The metal under my hands as Luke kisses me against the filing cabinets.  When I kiss him back my hands roam, the feel of his uniform jumper is like

 

Cashmere softest, smoothest, most luxurious of wools, dry clean only of course, splashed with red wine, wrapped around tall, fair haired, Greg's throat. Whose blue eyes smile down at my 21st birthday-not-quite-as-pissed-as-a-newt

 

Confusion.  Luke naked in front of me, freshly soaped, hot water streaming over tight muscle, he's glowing and I'm furious with myself for looking and

 

Wanting to lay down with him on Their bed.  Their bedroom walls are painted pale

 

Blue duvet tangled round my feet and toast crumbs in the bedclothes when Sean looks up from between my thighs, laughing as he scatters the offending particles onto the floor, to ask if I'd like to come to live with him and his 

 

Toaster, orchid, photo frame: clutched in Luke's hands, he's flustered and awkward as he tries to get past without touching me.  I heave a sigh of relief as I lean my back against the closed door.

 

And walk out of the hotel's lift with Greg giggling against my neck, his hands under my shirt as we stumble across the carpet to fall

 

Onto the green grass, laughing with my mother and the laundry flapping overhead sounds like sail boats

 

On the beach with Pete, digging my toes into the sand watching the damp grains cling together – balancing the clumps on top of my feet as a distraction when my throat closes round the words, “I'm gay.”  He's 20, and now he's leaving he ought to know the truth about me.  He still smells of sunshine, salt and

 

My wetsuit in Sean's hand the morning after our first night spent together.  Dangling the hanger so carefully on one outstretched finger as far away from his body as possible, camping up the question,

 

“Is there something I should know dear?”  My mother's arm is round my shoulders, her hair is short now and fading to middle age but she still smells of apples and she doesn't let go when I tell her a boy called Jeff has broken my heart.  My father puts a brave face on it but I can tell he's upset because he reaches for a cigarette - he's forgotten he quit

 

Smoking.  Carl sidling up to me in Purdy's.  Hand on my arse, claiming me before he even says hello.  If it hadn't been for Luke I wouldn't have been there

 

Crouched behind a patrol car in the park, Gina Gold beside me, watching SO19 swarm around the building he is still trapped inside.  After the shot I find I am

 

Shaking like a leaf when I walk through the gates of Hendon on my

 

First day at school with my mother waving goodbye from the gate.  Over my shoulder, through the railings, I see her climb back into our old

 

Cars stacked in precarious heaps as we search the scrap yard unsuccessfully for Reg.  Luke blushing as he stumbles his way through telling me he didn't sleep with

 

Kerry outside the church, bouquet in hand surrounded by guests - only there's one missing.

 

Cass, chirpy, good natured, bright spark Cass all alone now

 

Under the ground, Eva's daughter isn't in the park but

 

Joe is.  Chasing after

 

Luke asleep

 

Beside me when I wake up.

 

Not that I see him because my eyes are swollen shut.  The drag of the bedclothes across my legs alerts me to the fact I'm not alone.  Luke's the only man I know who can make Imperial Leather smell good; who catches his breath 'just so' while he sleeps.  When I lift one hand from under the covers to investigate it wakes him. 

 

And he kisses me tremulously, like the first shaky writing on the new blank page of our lives.


End file.
